One other scenario that might be practical is trying to make it home
late in the day when the wind is up and the thermals have died or been
broken up. One might use DS to fly perpendicular to the wind without
loosing altitude to get to the field.

Matt.

I've thought of this one a bit too. It's most likely to work pretty
late, when the atmosphere has decoupled, i.e. the ground is cooling
fast. The biggest problem for me at least is that you'd need a vast
area of very landable terrain!

John Cochrane